LAMBS R US!!! We have been blessed with a crop of healthy spring lambs, including one set of triplets and another of quadruplets!! We have black lambs, white lambs, black & white lambs, spotted, solid and one that is the color of peaches!Jenny
How to Eat Feet
Some people satiate their foot fetishes with a pedicure and a pair of five-inch Jimmy Choo platforms. Chris Cosentino handles his by shaving the foot then blowtorching any renegade hairs. Fellow chef and foot-enthusiast James Silk's solution involves less labor: "There's not much to do but suck away at them, really. They're just fun to have a good chew on."
Pig's feet are rooted in Southern cooking, while braised and deep-fried duck and chicken feet are Asian staples. Duck feet are bonier and have more of that pebbly webbing which at least makes them look distinctly avian. Chicken feet, unfortunately, look a lot like a small human hand, minus a finger.
There's almost nothing to sink your teeth into other than skin, which you chew and discard anyway, so why eat feet? "Because the taste is incredible," say Cosentino. Braising and deep-frying chicken and duck feet releases and concentrates the flavor in their bones, cartilage, skin and tendons. Getting a good gnaw-on is the only way to tap all that unctuous goodness. "You're not going to get that flavor any other way," he says.
Both have a soft spot for feet, particularly pig's, descriptively known as "trotters."
When we think "meat" we think skeletal meat, not feet. It's a generational thing says Cosentino. World War II rationing forced "more offal and less skeletal meats on my mother's generation and they didn't like it." Post-war prosperity meant families no longer had to utilize the whole animal and factory farming made skeletal meats the norm, trends both chefs decry.
That we waste animal parts because we're squeamish or think we're above eating them, is something we can get over, says Cosentino. He says we've gotten to the point where we only eat food "that has no semblance of having been a living creature, of having had a face." Most of us do avoid soft, jiggly, gelatinous foods if they're protein-based. Using every part he says, "gives total and true respect to the animal. We've forgotten what food is."
Trotters pack a flavorful punch, like duck and chicken feet, but with a lot more meat. It's rich and savory and unlike other offal it's not an acquired taste. It's offal for newbies. If you like pig, you'll like trotters. The trick is to counterbalance the meat's oily intensity with creative cooking that plays up its underlying flavor.
New Orleans is the land of the roux, cooked butter and flour that thickens and flavors sauces, but Silk eschews roux. "I thicken many sauces with feet. I always have a bunch in the freezer. It lets me say my dishes are gluten-free," he says archly. That's because collagen from bones, cartilage and skin is a natural thickener. He does a duck which involves boning out the neck, filling it with sausage and presenting the bird whole. He serves its feet on side as a kind of macabre garnish. He's had only limited success with cow's feet, "they're very hoofy, not much flesh or cartilage. I've tried, I've played, but end up using them largely for stock." He loves trotters and he likes them big enough to stuff.
